I've had this happen to me personally on vacation - we were locked out of our rental car, asked a person at the nearby place to call a locksmith to get me back in, and they didn't quote price over the phone. When they got there, they popped the lock and then wanted $200, cash only so you couldn't chargeback, which I learned after the fact is completely outrageous for that service. They had a lot of fake Google reviews that were glowing, overshadowed by the real ones calling out the scam.

I've heard worse happening in other cases where they drill locks and then quote much higher than $200 after they do it, it's sadly common.

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WarmWash a day ago | parent | next [-]

$200 for an emergency specialty service is shockingly...fair?

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tdeck a day ago | parent [-]

That's exactly what I would think if I were in trouble and hadn't done any research, but in fact it is not. When I needed a locksmith a few years ago, at night, it cost $70.

	▲	lossyalgo 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Probably depends highly on location, company and type of lock. I needed to get into my mailbox after losing the keys. They wanted 150 for literally 5 minutes with a screwdriver (lesson learned!). Of course I'm paying for those years of experience as well as the drive over. I was able to talk them down to 120. Oh and it was during the weekday! I also did research prior and called a few places, they all basically said the same thing: "depends on the lock but probably minimum 100".

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what a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The person charging you more than you think is reasonable in hindsight doesn’t make it a scam? It also doesn’t mean you can do a chargeback?